Hello everyone,
I am a community tutor and a fellow language learner, and I was just reading through the language challenge rules and FAQs for this upcoming July 2018 Language Challenge. It seems to me that there is no room in this challenge for people who are trying to advance their language skills with a language exchange partner. I think this is a real shame, and that there should be a similar or parallel challenge for the loads of people on italki who have partner's, or who can't afford a tutor for 12 -20 hours of instruction. In some cases, many of you might be speaking with your language partners for as much as that, already! In my own case, I speak with my Italian exchange partner 1 -2 hours a week.
I don't much care about a digital badge of course, but for a site that cares about language EXCHANGE, I really think the presence of this challenge that exists only for people buying lessons really highlights a lack of attention and care for the language-exchange-only population on italki.
What do you all think?
